VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - As a dozen relatives of his victims held hands and wept behind him, John Allen Muhammad was found guilty of capital murder yesterday for using a teen-age boy and a beat-up Chevrolet to spread terror and take 10 lives in the Washington-area sniper rampage last fall.
The jurors who convicted the 42-year-old Army veteran after 6 1/2 hours of deliberations moved almost immediately into the sentencing phase of the case, in which they will decide whether Muhammad will spend the rest of his life in prison or die by lethal injection.
Muhammad stood expressionless at the defense table, clasping his hands in front of him and staring straight ahead, as the clerk of the court read the guilty verdicts shortly before noon. Two jurors held hands and two cried. All of the jurors looked at the clerk - not Muhammad - as the verdict was read.
Family members of the victims wrapped their arms around one another as they heard the pronouncement of guilt, and several later hugged the lead prosecutor, Paul B. Ebert.
The jury of seven women and five men found Muhammad guilty on all four counts against him - two of capital murder, one of conspiracy to commit murder and one of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
"Justice was done," said Bob Meyers, a brother of civil engineer Dean H. Meyers, 53, who was killed Oct. 9, 2002, at a gas station near Manassas, Va. "Certainly, this is a huge step in the pursuit of closure, but I would really doubt that full closure ever comes because there's always an open wound that remains."
One of the capital murder convictions, under Virginia's multiple killings law, is for killing more than one person in a three-year period. The other, under the state's new anti-terrorism law, is for killing someone while committing an act of terror designed to intimidate the public and influence the government.
`A life to be weighed'
As the sentencing phase got under way, defense attorneys quickly changed their strategy from trying to show that Muhammad was not guilty of the charges to trying to show that his life has value and is worth preserving.
In his opening statement for sentencing yesterday, lawyer Jonathan Shapiro said he accepted the verdict even as he urged compassion.
"There's a life to be weighed, there's a life on the line," Shapiro told jurors. "You will make your own decision - to kill him or to spare him - and I know this is a very, very painful place to be right now. Your decision will put Mr. Muhammad in a box of one sort or another; one is made of concrete and one is made of pinewood."
